A picture is 20 inches tall and 15 inches wide. To fit the picture in a frame, it needs to be reduced to 8 inches tall. How wide does the picture need to be, if it is similar to the original size?

20 15
— = —-
8 x

20x = 15 * 8

20x = 120
— —–
20 20

x = 6 inches wide

This is a dilation because the sides of the triangles match up.

First you measure the sides of the triangle:  A’B’=6 and AB= 3

Then you divide the lengths: 6/3= 2

After that you do the same with the other sides: B’C’= 8 and BC= 4

Then divide again: 8/4=2

Since both of the final answers are two that means that the triangles are dilations of each other.

They have no speech, they use no words; no sounds is heard from them. Yet their voices go out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world. -Psalm 19: 3-4

Last May we went to Camp Roger for leadership camp. We came up with the theme Shout Silently-Actions that Speak and learned how to be better leaders of the school. I can use the theme Shout Silently as an 8^th grader at school and also in the world. 

There are lots of ways that I can Shout Silently at school. I can help people with whatever they need like homework or being friends with everyone, not just my really close friends. I can Shout Silently by being nice and smiling at younger kids in the hallway or outside. Respecting others is a huge way to Shout Silently. I need to do random acts of kindness, put others first and treat others the way I would want to be treated.

I can Shout Silently with my actions at home and in the world. When I am at home this year I am going to try my best to do things the first time I am asked and not complain, do things that need to be done without being asked, and serving people without receiving anything back from them. I can Shout  Silently in the world by spending time with friends that I don’t see much or people who don’t have very many friends. Going on a mission trip is a bigger way that I could Shout Silently in the world.

I can use the theme Shout Silently as an 8^th grader at school and also in the world. This year I am going to have lots of opportunities to Shout Silently. We are the leaders of the school, so our actions are especially important this year.

Winning Balance by Shawn Johnson

This is a biography about Shawn Johnson’s life before and after the olympics. It talks about her struggles and triumphs.In the beginning of the book it talks about her life when she was little and how she was not always the kid that everyone liked. It talks about how she started gymnastics and what she liked to do besides gymnastics. It also talks about her training before the olympics and how she spent endless hours practicing and training with her coaches and teammates. After the olympics, she went on the show Dancing with the Stars for one season, and ended up winning. This book talked a lot about how her faith fit into her career. She prayed and trusted that God would help her through hard times, when she didn’t think that she could get through them by herself. My favorite part of this book is when she goes to the olympics and gets gold because it didn’t seem like it was possible for her too, but she trusted in God and did her best and then she won. I also liked how she said when she got home, she needed to remind herself to be humble and just like herself before she became famous. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes gymnastics or encouraging books in general.

In science class we have ben learning about different cells and how they are made up. Our assignment was to create an edible cell. We could choose from an animal cell or a plant cell. My partner Elise and I chose to create a plant cell of of banana bread, frosting, candy, and other food.

In bible, we have been thinking about prayer and how it is important for our relationship with God. This morning, we are looking at the Lord’s Prayer. One of the phrases that I thought was important from the Lord’s Prayer is, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” This part of the prayer explains that it is important for us to ask God to forgive us from our sins and that we need to forgive other people for what they have done to us. We need to tell God what we did wrong even though he already knows everything that we have done wrong and what we will do wrong in the future. Forgiveness is a big part of our relationship with God.

On Thursday we started talking about our unit on Africa. For an activity, we listed everything that we thought of when we heard the word Africa. We listed words like safari, people, adoption, poor, jungle, and hot. After that we talked about how some of those words only described some parts of Africa. Like for example, the word “safari” only describes a few parts of Africa. We learned that we cannot label Africa as a whole, only parts of it. For another activity, we looked at pictures of people and had to decide if they were from Africa or not. A lot of them were surprising. People from different parts of Africa look very different. People from South Africa look very different then people from Egypt. It was really interesting.

Flowers

herb, vine, bud, blossom

it’s not ugly like a possum.